When I was in college I majored in biology. It wasn’t pre-med biology though; the program was geared more for a career in wildlife management or forestry. As a result, I had a lot of courses that had interesting field trips. We radio-tracked deer, did forest surveys, went behind the scenes at a zoo, toured a fish hatchery, visited botanical gardens, and generally spent a lot of time in the fields of western New York during all parts of the school year.
One of our professors knew a guy that worked for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which opened the door for us to do some neat stuff. As it turns out, a farmer probably an hour away had discovered a black bear hibernating in one of the big round hay bales in his field. The farmer invited the DEQ to come and survey the situation, which would add data to the organization’s knowledge of the bear population in the area. Our class got to go along and observe.
We arrived at the farm and waited a safe distance away while the DEQ folks tranquilized the bear. (When bears hibernate, they’re not in a solid, deep sleep the whole time; they wake up and move around on warm days, so they had to make sure it wasn’t going to do anything unexpected.) I’m not sure what method they used to do it, but after they stuck the bear, it got scared and took off running. It probably made it 100 yards before it stopped running and laid down. The farmer and DEQ folks then gently loaded it into the bucket of a tractor and brought it back to the area right in front of the den, where they weighed it, checked its teeth, determined its age, and collected some other information.
It’s a tricky thing to tranquilize something when you don’t know how much it weighs. If you use too little tranquilizer, the bear’s going to start moving sooner than you’d like, but if you use too much, you’ll have a hard time reviving the bear. Whoever was responsible for this part did a good job, but you’re never quite sure if the estimate is going to be good enough. As a precaution, they used a bandana to cover the bear’s eyes after they had laid it down on the ground. The thinking was that as the bear began regaining consciousness, it would stay a little more calm if it couldn’t see how close all these people were. Keeping it more calm would hopefully prevent it from trying to lash out without even having regained full control of its body, which could be harmful for both us and the bear.
It didn’t take very long for the DEQ folks to collect all the desired information, so after they finished they pretty much just needed to monitor the bear until the tranquilizer wore off. In the mean time they let people take pictures with the bear. After a bit, they shooed us all away because they didn’t know how much longer the drugs would last. We left to head back to school, and we found out later that as the last DEQ employees were getting ready to depart, the bear started growling. (If that’s not a “time to go!” signal, I’m not sure what is.)
Have you ever asked God to let you know what’s going to happen if you proceed in a certain direction, only to be met with increased murkiness? He might just do that on purpose. A lot of times it’s because we can’t handle knowing what’s on the other side. You don’t know what will happen if you obey, but if you did, you might not follow through with what you know you’re supposed to do. That might be because you believe the personal cost of the outcome will be too great, or it might be because you’d be overwhelmed with seeing just how far beyond you your actions will go and it just seems too daunting to begin. Either way, the result is the same: you’re not setting out on the calling God has laid before you. In many cases, we’re better off being kept “blindfolded,” like the bear, because too much information will actually be detrimental.
Instead try this. Think of your obedience to God’s calling in terms of chapters, rather than as a pamphlet. You need to find out what happens in one chapter before moving on to the next. By the end of the book, you’ll have the whole picture, but if you had started out knowing what happens in the end, some of the important stuff that happened in the middle would lose its significance or change the outcome.
It might feel as though you know what God’s prodding you to do, but it seems insignificant. Well, that might be true, but part of the reason for that is because you might just be starting a new book. You’re blindfolded right now, but don’t just lay there growling. Step out in obedience and faith; chapter two is waiting for you, but you can’t start it until you finish chapter one.
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